Canvassing Board

DELAND -- Volusia's canvassing board won't meet this week after all, Elections Supervisor Ann McFall said Monday. The three-member board was supposed to meet today, but McFall said Monday the meeting was rescheduled. It is now planned for 9 a.m. July 14 in Conference Room 1 at 125 W. New York Ave., DeLand. McFall, County Judge David Beck and County Chairman Frank Bruno are the three members of the canvassing board, which is in charge of overseeing the 2006 elections.

Pretty soon, Winter Garden voters, your commissioners may have to live in the city. And they might not be able to serve on the canvassing board, which counts votes at election time. Of course, they could also get longer terms. It all depends on how you vote in a September referendum in which eligible Winter Garden residents will have the chance to approve or reject 14 proposed changes to the city charter. Ballots will be mailed to registered voters starting Sept. 5. Voting will end Sept.

Just a week ago, who would have thought that Osceola's canvassing board might be the most prominent decision-making body around? Because of the tight presidential race -- and Florida's role in it -- the three members have been busier than anyone could have predicted. And it's not likely to end until . . . well, who knows when. Seems like there's a daily, if not hourly, possibility of a meeting to deal with some issue. Take Tuesday, for instance. The board had a quick meeting just before 1 p.m. after a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group asked for access to all of Osceola's ballots.

DeLand -- Volusia County Chairman Frank Bruno said Thursday evening that he plans to ask the Canvassing Board this afternoon to investigate why so many memory cards failed during the Nov. 7 election. Eight cards, the devices that record electronic votes, had to be replaced that Tuesday morning. Four others were changed out during the previous two weeks of early voting, said Bruno, who serves on the Canvassing Board along with Elections Supervisor Ann McFall and County Judge David Beck.

Bill Tolley, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for District 15 U.S. House filed a protest Friday with the Brevard County Canvassing Board.Tolley, who ran against incumbent Jim Bacchus, filed a separate protest Thursday in Circuit Court.Both actions focused on election return printouts distributed to the public Tuesday night that showed more votes being cast than there were precinct voters. Election workers have said early printouts were erroneously adding absentee ballots.The protest said Tolley's office received reports of ballots being distributed incorrectly.

Abnormal patterns in last week's election results and the reluctance by one election worker to certify those results might mean a recount in the close mayor's race.Thomas Mahoney, city commissioner and canvassing board member, said Wednesday he feels he can't certify last week's results in the mayor's race -- in which incumbent Dick Fess beat challenger Randy Morris by 37 votes -- because he was not present when the votes were counted.Mahoney also cited abnormal voting patterns as one reason why he plans to ask the canvassing board to recount by hand the 1,869 votes cast in the mayor's race.

WEST PALM BEACH -- The likelihood grew Wednesday that canvassing boards in Broward and Palm Beach counties will be the ultimate arbiters of the closest presidential race in U.S. history. With just four days remaining before the Florida vote is final, canvassers in the two counties continued to scrutinize hundreds of problem ballots. Those ballot-by-ballot decisions hold Democrat Al Gore's last chance of winning the election. A Palm Beach County Circuit Court judge added to the uncertainty Wednesday, ordering the county's three canvassers to give irregular ballots careful consideration and not rely on a set standard to accept or reject them.

DELAND - The results from three House District 26 precincts should be manually recounted to restore voters' faith in the county's election system, the Volusia Canvassing Board decided Monday.The three-person board unanimously decided to hold the recount after considering a request from Janet Bollum, the Democratic legislative candidate who lost to Republican Pat Patterson by 883 votes in the Nov.3 election.The board - consisting of Supervisor of Elections Deanie Lowe, County Council member Jim Ward and county Judge Mary Jane Henderson - said recounting a sampling of the ballots would show the public that the results of the election are reliable.

James Markel, who lost the race for a City Commission seat this week by one vote, is protesting the results after county election officials found an invalid ballot Friday.Betty Carter, Orange County Supervisor of Elections, had workers examine the ballots after a recount Wednesday showed that Joseph Terranova beat Markel by 2,685 to 2,684.''With an election this close, it was imperative that we got back and looked at everything,'' said Carter, whose office oversees the city's elections. ''I had a crew work this one over a fine-tooth comb.

MIAMI -- After hand-counting the presidential votes from three precincts picked by Democrats, Miami-Dade County's canvassing board Tuesday night found six more votes for Vice President Al Gore. But the results from the three precincts were not enough to persuade two of the canvassing board members to continue a hand count of all the ballots or even all of the more than 10,000 ballots counted as nonvotes in that race. The lone Democrat on the board, County Judge Lawrence D. King, the chairman, favored the full recount.

KISSIMMEE -- Election officials finished manually recounting votes Thursday in the race for an Osceola School Board seat, with the final tally confirming incumbent John McKay's razor-thin margin of victory over Judy Robertson. McKay beat the former board member he unseated four years ago by just 92 votes, garnering 50.11 percent of the vote compared with Robertson's 49.88 percent for the District 5 seat. Results are expected to be certified today by the county's Canvassing Board. "I am extremely pleased, and I am really looking forward to the next four years because I think there are a lot of things that can take place," McKay said Thursday.

DeLAND -- Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall said Monday that for the November general election, she will try to fix a problem with election returns that confused voters and candidates. McFall's announcement came as she and the other two members of the county canvassing board certified the results from last week's primary election. The issue arose when the county's online election results showed that all precincts had been reported for a particular race, despite a continuing change in voting totals.

DELAND -- Volusia's canvassing board won't meet this week after all, Elections Supervisor Ann McFall said Monday. The three-member board was supposed to meet today, but McFall said Monday the meeting was rescheduled. It is now planned for 9 a.m. July 14 in Conference Room 1 at 125 W. New York Ave., DeLand. McFall, County Judge David Beck and County Chairman Frank Bruno are the three members of the canvassing board, which is in charge of overseeing the 2006 elections.

DELTONA -- This city's mayoral race vanished from the Oct. 11 ballot Tuesday as frustration mounted about votes cast already that won't be counted. Meanwhile, new concerns were raised about the way the city is handling the mayoral election -- now set for next month. Deltona Tennis Association founder Dennis Mulder, whose attorney plans to file objections with state officials today about uncounted votes, said he is also upset that an elected official who publicly supports his opponent sits on the city's canvassing board -- the two-member panel that opens absentee ballots and performs other tasks on Election Day. Deltona City Commissioner David Santiago, who has publicly endorsed fellow City Commissioner Doug Horn for mayor, sits on the canvassing board with City Clerk Faith Miller.

A judge Friday dismissed a lawsuit aimed at tossing out the results from the November election in Volusia County, saying for a second time that the challenge was simply filed too late. DeLeon Springs activist Susan Pynchon contested the results of the elections supervisor race in a suit filed against the Volusia County Canvassing Board on Nov. 23, a day after the deadline to contest the election. Pynchon, the executive director of Florida Fair Elections Coalition in DeLand, said she was disappointed by Friday's ruling but hasn't give up her battle to "find out what" happened during the Nov. 2 election.

VOLUSIA -- A judge today is expected to decide the fate of a lawsuit aimed at tossing the results from the November election in Volusia County. Circuit Judge C. McFerrin Smith III pledged to issue a ruling today after hearing arguments from both sides Thursday about whether activist Susan Pynchon's lawsuit contesting the elections supervisor race and alleging irregularities in the Nov. 2 election should move forward. Theodore Doran, who is the attorney for County Attorney Dan Eckert and Election Supervisor Ann McFall, asked Smith to dismiss the suit for many reasons, including the fact that it was filed a day after the deadline to contest the election under state law. The 10-day clock starts ticking after the canvassing board -- a three-member panel of elected officials -- certifies the election, which happened Nov. 12, meaning the deadline was Nov. 22, officials said.

By Kelly Brewington and David Damron of The Sentinel Staff, December 11, 2000

After being stopped dead in their tracks Saturday, Lake County election officials will be on call today when the nation's highest court could hand down a decision whether to proceed with statewide hand recounts in the race for president. On Saturday, election officials had not started tallying the ballots that were originally ignored by machines, but had sorted through about 80 percent of the county's 91,989 ballots in search of the county's 245 undervotes, only to receive word shortly after 3 p.m. to stop.

DELAND - The board that oversees elections in Volusia has certified all of the results from the Nov. 2 election except one: the county referendum calling for new development limits called urban-growth boundaries. The boundaries, aimed at keeping intense growth out of Volusia's rural core, were approved by more than 71 percent of voters. But the three-member Volusia County Canvassing Board withheld certification of the referendum Friday because of a ruling pending from the 5th District Court of Appeal in Daytona Beach.

Sanford's Civil Service Board heard several hours of testimony over three days last week and unanimously recommended that former Deputy City Manager Andrew Van Gaale be reinstated. Van Gaale was demoted to a junior planning position by City Manager Al Grieshaber in August, taking a $50,000 pay cut. The board found that the discipline was "inappropriate" and recommended that Van Gaale get his old job back and that the incident be expunged from his personnel record. Grieshaber had fired Van Gaale for his use of a city-leased golf cart during the city's Fourth of July celebration and for not showing up to work at the event, which he said he would do. Van Gaale insists he did work code-enforcement issues at the city celebration.